STARS: A software application for the EBEX autonomous daytime star cameras

TL;DR

The paper presents STARS, a robust software application developed for EBEX's star cameras, enabling effective operation, data collection, and integration with the flight system during a balloon-borne CMB experiment.

Contribution

Introduction of STARS, a new software system that manages star cameras for EBEX, ensuring reliability and successful in-flight performance.

Findings

STARS operated successfully during the EBEX flight.

The software interface effectively integrated star cameras with the flight computer.

Robustness against in-flight failures was achieved.

Abstract

The E and B Experiment (EBEX) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to probe polarization signals in the CMB resulting from primordial gravitational waves, gravitational lensing, and Galactic dust emission. EBEX completed an 11 day flight over Antarctica in January 2013 and data analysis is underway. EBEX employs two star cameras to achieve its real-time and post-flight pointing requirements. We wrote a software application called STARS to operate, command, and collect data from each of the star cameras, and to interface them with the main flight computer. We paid special attention to make the software robust against potential in-flight failures. We report on the implementation, testing, and successful in flight performance of STARS.